Goblins Vs Dwarves (15 page)

Onwards and onwards raced the cart, rattling and swerving through the tight, black bowels of the Bonehills. At last Skarper found the nerve to open one eye and peer upwards. Not even goblin eyes could see anything in that inky, roaring darkness, but he could imagine the low, jagged rock of the tunnel roof speeding by just inches above him.

“I don't think this was such a good idea,” he told Etty.

“Perhaps it will get better. . .” Etty started to say.

But it got worse. The dwarves who built the railway had planned it so that their carts would pick up plenty of speed at the beginning of their journey. As Etty spoke, the track seemed to drop away beneath the cart, and it went plummeting down, down, down through the dark. Sparks flared wildly from the wheels, lighting up the rushing tunnel walls.

“Aaaaaaaaaaargh!” screamed Etty and Skarper together, and the long echoes were torn away behind them.

Then the echoes changed. The cavern widened, and there was light again as the carts reached the bottom of that long drop and went rattling across a rickety-looking bridge above a glass-clear, glass-still, underground lake. The light came from the torches of dwarves on a road that ran beside this lake, threading its way between stalagmites and tall, slender columns of stone. The dwarves had heard Etty and Skarper's screams, and stopped to stare as the train of carts went clattering by. In the front one Etty and Skarper busied themselves throwing out more chunks of ore so that they could burrow down deeper. The ore fell with white splashes into the water below, and the spreading ripples broke and scattered the reflections of the watching dwarves and their torches, freckling the cavern walls with shifting light.

The railway curved, and the cart started to gather speed again, descending towards the entrance of another tunnel. “Etty!” called a voice from behind. Skarper looked back and saw Durgar and Langstone scrambling over the ore in the last cart.

“Look!” he said, tugging at one of Etty's braids to catch her attention. “They must have jumped in as we were leaving!”

“Oh, Father!” said the girl.

Ignoring the wobbling and juddering of the carts, old Durgar clambered unsteadily to his feet and sprung across the gap which separated his cart from the one in front of it. “Never fear, Etty!” he shouted. “I'll save you!”

“He must think I've kidnapped you!” said Skarper.

“I'm not afraid!” Etty shouted back. “Eeeeek!”

They were in darkness again, plunging through another rock-walled tube, the cart leaning so far to one side that Skarper felt sure it was going to fall over, but it was kept on the rails by its own rushing weight. He thought of Durgar and Langstone, just seven carts behind, but the sparks which kept flashing from the wheels showed him that the tunnel roof had closed down again; there was not even room for him to raise his head above the brim of the cart, let alone look back. That meant the two dwarves could come no closer: they'd be cowering in their own cart for the moment.

On and on the carts went thundering, slowing now as they climbed long, shallow inclines, then gathering more speed as the track sloped downwards again. Several times the tunnel opened into wider caverns, and once by spark-light Skarper and Etty saw Durgar jump from the seventh cart to the sixth. The cart rattled across sets of rusty points where other rails joined the main one, branch-lines coming in from other mines. Once it crossed a bridge which seemed to span some unimaginable abyss: Skarper had a sense of a great space opening below him, and thought he saw red veins of molten stone glowing sullenly, miles below. For the most part, though, the headlong journey was spent in blind, black darkness. After a while Skarper grew so used to the careering of the cart that he stopped being scared by it. Carts of ore must come this way every day, he told himself. These clever old dwarves wouldn't have made the bends and drops of their railway sharp or steep enough to derail their trains and spill their precious cargoes. He snuggled down into the ore next to Etty and tried to relax, telling himself that the only things they had to fear were Durgar and Langstone, and there was little chance of them making it all the way to the front cart at this rate.

“I never realized there was so much going on down under the mountains,” he said, having to shout a bit over the thundering wheels and their echoes. “Railways and stuff, and these great big holes.”

“We are deep in Dwarvendom now,” said Etty, close to his ear. “Some of these caverns we pass through are old mines, dug when the world was young, before Men came to live in it. Things were better then; when dwarves ruled above the land as well as beneath it. . .”

And then, as people in the Westlands so often did when they started thinking about history, she began to sing:

It was an age of gold and stone

The dwarvenking sat on his throne

In Dwarvenholm where halls were hollowed

By the first dwarves, and those that followed

Had dug them deeper, made them fine

With silver's glimmer; diamond's shine.

Said the dwarves,

“By land or sea, there are none mightier than we.”

 

Dwarves were lords of all things then,

Until into the land came Men

The Dwarvenking heard of their fleet,

He said I shall go forth and meet

These strangers: at my feet they'll fall,

For I am so strong, so very tall.

Said the dwarves,

“By land or sea, there are none mightier than we.”

This great king stood full four feet tall!

Proudly he ventured from his hall;

He did not think to find that Men

Were half as tall as him again.

And when they met him, looking down,

They laughed, “A king? This little clown?”

Then cried the dwarves,

“Across the sea have come some mightier than we!”

 

The pride of Dwarvendom was gone

And many a mirthless, bitter song

Tells of the mockery Men brought

Of how they pointed, called us “short”

And crueller names, the least of which

Were “half-pint”, “stumpy-legs” and “titch”.

Now groaned the dwarves,

“By land or sea, there are none lowlier than we.”

 

And so in darkness dwarfkind dwells,

In halls and delves beneath the fells,

Waiting for the great day when

Dwarves will look down again on Men.

“So is that why dwarves are so grumpy, then?” asked Skarper, when she had finished. “Because you're short?”

“We aren't grumpy!” said Etty. “And WE ARE NOT SHORT!”

The cart shot out again just then into a larger stretch of tunnel, and her voice echoed loudly from its curving walls and roof: “SHORT . . . ORT . . . ORT. . .” This cavern was lit by mole-dung lamps, which burned outside a little building beside the tracks ahead. The cart veered around a series of tight bends towards it, the rails snaking through a forest of huge stalagmites and stalactites, some of which had joined in the middle to form wasp-waisted pillars. Clinging on tightly to Etty as the cart threw him them from side to side, Skarper looked nervously behind him. Old Durgar was springing nimbly from the sixth cart to the fifth, the fifth to the fourth. Langstone followed behind him, but failed to notice a low-hanging stalactite. “Oof!” he shouted as it swiped him, and he tumbled down out of sight below the tracks.

“Oh, poor Langstone!” gasped Etty.

Skarper was more worried about poor Skarper. Durgar had ducked the stalactite, and was now poised to jump from the fourth cart to the third. He had pulled a big, two-headed axe out of his belt, and he was eyeing Skarper as if he meant to use it.

Desperately, Skarper looked round, hoping that there might be another low tunnel ahead. There wasn't. But there was something else; something which scared him even more than Durgar's axe.

“Dwarves are not
short
!” Etty was saying. “It's the biglings who are too tall! Everyone knows that!”

“Etty!” Skarper shouted, pointing, and she looked, and saw what had frightened him.

About one hundred feet ahead of them, just beyond that brightly lit building, the track started to rise; a gentle slope, up which the carts would easily be carried by their own momentum. Except that halfway up, a large chunk of the rails was missing. There was a hole in the cavern roof there – a sort of raggedy, melted-looking hole, not at all like a tunnel dwarves would make – and the tracks beneath it seemed to have melted too, the spindly viaduct that supported them collapsing to leave a wide gap in the railway.

“Oh!” said Etty, staring at it. “A tunnel worm!”

“A what?” yelled Skarper. They shot past the lamplit building, and he caught a glimpse inside, of overturned chairs and tables, fallen tools, the place deserted. And now the cart was starting uphill, slowing a little as it hit the incline, but not enough that he could see any hope of stopping it before it reached that damaged section.

From behind him came a crunch as Durgar leaped and landed in the second cart. “I have you now, goblin!” he gloated.

“Oh bum –” Skarper started to say, and the cart was suddenly off the rails and spinning through empty air, ore, girl and goblin spilling out and tumbling down among the roots of the stalagmites. Skarper clamped his dwarf helm down tightly with his paws and felt chunks of ore and other debris rattling against it. “– cakes!” he said. He scuffled into a niche between two stalagmites and peered back to see the carts come crashing down off the broken track one by one. The enormous din of their falling made his teeth rattle.

“Etty?” he shouted, through the rolling echoes. “Etty?”

“I'm all right!” she called, standing up nearby, caked with dust and touching her forehead, where a small wound dribbled blood.

“I have you now, goblin!” roared Durgar again – he seemed to think it was a pretty good line, and worth repeating. He came stumbling out of the wreckage with his axe agleam, and his eyes gleamed too, focusing on Skarper. “Sneak into our delves, would you, stone-born scum? Kidnap my daughter? Sabotage our railway?”

“But I never. . .” Skarper whimpered, drawing his short sword and thinking how little use it would be against this strong, angry dwarf with his dirty great big axe.

“Skarper didn't do this, Father,” Etty shouted. “Don't you see the signs? That hole above us? 'Tis a tunnel worm!”

“A worm?” Durgar looked suddenly uncertain.

“What's a tunnel worm?” asked Skarper.

As if to answer him, a long, terrible shape burst from the shadows where the wrecked carts lay. It was a serpentlike thing, as thick around as the pipe that was drinking Clovenstone's slowsilver.

“Oh, right,” said Skarper.

“Moawwrr!” roared the worm, opening its vicious beak and lunging at Durgar. The dwarf, taken by surprise, had no time to turn and face it. His axe clattered uselessly to the ground as the creature seized him round his middle and lifted him high into the air.

“Father!” screamed Etty.

“Run, Daughter!” Durgar cried, kicking his short legs as the thing shook him furiously from side to side. His helmet flew off and fell among the stalagmites with a clatter like a dropped pan. “Run, Etty! Save yourself!”

Near Skarper's foot the fallen axe glinted, catching the faint lamplight which filtered between the stalactites. Not quite sure what he was doing, nor why he was doing it, Skarper threw his sword aside and picked the axe up. The tunnel worm was sliding backwards, dragging Durgar with it into another of those melted-looking tunnels, which opened in the cavern floor between the supports of the dwarves' viaduct. Durgar was grabbing at anything that came in reach – wrecked carts, stalagmites and bits of spilled ore – but the worm was stronger, and it plainly meant to drag him back into its lair.

“Father!” wailed Etty again.

Skarper lifted the axe, and brought it down hard on the worm's neck, just behind its outsized, ugly head. There was a splatter and fountaining of dark blood, and the head, with Durgar clamped in its beak, dropped off. The bleak light faded from its eyes. Durgar wrenched the beak open and stumbled free, staring at Skarper in astonishment.

“Skarper, no!” shouted Etty, scrambling over the heaps of tipped-out ore to support her father as he stumbled and almost fell. “You don't chop off a worm's head!”

“Why not?” asked Skarper, who had been feeling rather pleased with himself.

“You'll just make it angry!” Etty cried.